Win of the Week — Don’t Keep Them Guessing

If you guessed Ad B, you guessed right. But the real question is WHY — and that can only be answered by examining the two ads side by side.

The Original Ad

The Headline: The losing ad’s headline starts with a vague benefit, that is unlikely to mirror how the prospective customer thinks about his or her buying motivation: “Automate Inspection.” In other words, the jump from looking for inspection software to “automation” is too large and may even confuse the issue. Why? Because when most people think of “automation,” they think of large complex systems. But when someone is looking for a simple tool to help them make it easier to comply with inspection requirements, “large” and “complex” are not what they are looking for.

First Line of Body Copy: The first line of body copy seeks to counter the negative associations of “automation” with the “easy to use” phrase, but ends up doing more harm with the word “tool.” Customized “tools” are probably not what the customer is after if they are looking for software that will work with the computers and hardware that they already have.

Second Line of Body Copy: The second line of body copy is pretty much neutral, but fails to use any important keyword phrases and ends with a fairly week call-to-action.

The Boost Creative Network Ad

The Headline: The headline for the winning ad has the incredibly important feature of saying exactly what’s for sale in a manner that immediately speaks to the search criteria of the prospect: “Inspection Software.” After all, if this is what you’re searching Google for, it’s probably what you expect to find in your search results, right?

The First Line of Body Copy: The first line of body copy does for the winning ad what the headline of the losing ad failed to do — it speaks to the felt needs and desires of the prospect. “Eliminate paper” and “Increase Safety” ARE felt needs and desired benefits that the prospect can easily identify. And unlike “automation” these benefits carry no negative connotations or associations.

The Second Line of Body Copy: The second line of body copy brings those promised benefits into increased clarity and vividness. “Go Mobile” means the solution will work with a mobile device. Ideally, the copy would indicate that it works with the mobile devices you already own, such as an iPad or smartphone, which is, in fact, the case. But still, some beneficial copy is better than no beneficial copy, which is what the losing ad’s second line of copy provides.

The Take-Away

Clarity isn’t everything, but it IS the starting point for almost everything good when it comes to copy, whereas a lack of clarity not only sows the seeds of confusion, but can open the door for conversion and CTR-killing negative associations. So when it comes to PPC Ads, don’t keep ’em guessing!

About Boost Media

Boost Media increases advertiser profitability by using a combination of humans and a proprietary software platform to drive increased ad relevance at scale.